Hope, “Squirrel Report”, and Election Burnout

“Squirrel Report” is the reboot of “Vicious Circle” which is basically a bunch of gun bloggers blowing off steam, having fun with alcohol and skype, while recording it all for your listening pleasure. The show is dashed with periodic discussions of gun geekery and political commentary. It isn’t exactly safe for work, small children, the elderly– or anyone who objects to strong language or German Porn. It is not recommended for anyone who has an instinct for political correctness. In other words, it is a very human show.

To be fair, the reboot is easier on the ears, (and the sensibilities) but a clever person can see clearly what falls between the cracks. Ahem.

Husband is a fan, and listens avidly. I listen with half an ear for real discussion while ignoring most of the internet dredge, while trying to distract myself by praying the rosary. They’d probably find me disturbing and hilarious. The feeling is entirely mutual– but probably for different reasons. I’d buy any of them an alcoholic beverage of choice as long as I wasn’t forced to watch any videos. 😉

All I’m going to say is that my father used to tell his medical student stories at the dinner table when I was a kid, so it’s not like I’m squeamish. It’s just there is so much (rule #34)– stuff like that out there, that I get sick of it. It was all supposed to make you edgy and cool when you were in high school. Frankly, I find most of it banal. Null content. Ironic how the fleeing from the banality of a boring middle class life can just add up to a different kind of dull banality. But I digress massively.

So Breda was asking about whether or not she should give a friend of hers a gun lesson. This person who asked her is someone who’s had everything given to her on a silver platter– school paid, car insurance paid, lived at home, etc. Oh, and she voted for Obama, apparently. Everyone, callers and her co-hosts– encouraged Breda to do so.

Breda got upset and said that after the last election, her sense was that it was too late to try to teach anyone . That they had done all the damage and there was no going back from where we are. This made me very sad. It sounds like the kind of hopeless stupor that I suffered from just after the last election.

But I got over it, and went to confession. I will admit, it took about 2 weeks before I wanted to talk about politics again.

I got over it because I had to decide what kind of world I wanted for the future. Sure, our country may be irrevocably hosed. I accept that may be reality at this point. But that doesn’t mean that the takers of the world have to dictate what culture I live in. If we give up on showing people what we do isn’t crazy– the terrorists have already won.

Sooner or later, people will figure out that we have a good thing going– a good life, a thing worth defending, a culture worth perpetuating. That standing your ground, that living the traditional American values is what brought millions upon millions of people in an unprecedented effort to try to live together peaceably and seek out happiness on these fair shores. They must know instinctively that this will not die so easily.

It has taken them over 100 years to dismantle our Constitution, to destroy our credit, to corrupt our education, to make us beg for bread and circuses, to ‘consent’ to stand in line for a check up. But until they have crushed our hope in the future, until they have obliterated our hope in our culture, and our very way of life– they still have to watch their back.

While those days may be coming, I have to believe that now that people know the secret, the Grand Experiment will be tried again.

It MUST be tried again. I want people to remember what it was, how good it was for human beings, and how true freedom is a thing to be cherished even when the Enemy seems to have won. If you shun those who might want a taste of it– the culture will not perpetuate itself. And those vile spin doctors will laugh over it until they too are led away in chains.

So please, Breda, do not despair, and do not force her to walk up too difficult of a slope to see the good you have gotten from recognizing where your freedom truly comes from. Remember how the drug dealer works. You give her a taste, then let her figure it out how to get what she craves.

She needs to have something to want before she can want it. Sooner or later she can be one of us, who lives in the shadows of our oppressors, passing on the memory of our great country until the time is right, until the edifice collapses in on itself, and/or We the People feel ready to water the Tree of Liberty again.

I got over my adolescence relatively recently. It took a lot of things piling up to remove those blinders from my eyes. But it happened, and I believe it can happen for others. And it is more important for it to happen now.

We will overcome. We may not see it in our life time, but by samizdat or by crook we will take back our country. But we must win the war, not the battle. Sure Obama won the battle. But unless we succeed in perpetuating the culture of self-reliance, the boostrapped culture, it will die.

Thenit will be too late. But as long as there is the culture, and people who believe in it,and those who are willing to go the extra distance to keep the hope alive, to keep our heritage safe and strong in the hearts of those we encounter– they haven’t won yet.

Because it is ultimately not armed men who win wars. That is why the leftist view of the world will never explain our history as it actually happened. They think that Christianity was only spread by the sword. They think that America was carved out of this continent with nothing but blood. But a good many people choose to be American– people who don’t even live here. People until very recently very much wanted what we had. We must show them that it is still here, even if our leaders don’t agree that it should still exist. Some of those who don’t live in that country of the mind actually call themselves Americans.

People accuse us of having a “Imperialist Culture”– and that is where they are wrong. We didn’t force the French to listen to Jerry Lewis. We didn’t force anyone to build Euro-Disney. No US soldiers drew their weapons to force Mickey-D’s on the unsuspecting populations of– practically everywhere. No. Ordinary people wanted it. LOTS of them. All of those projects cost billions of dollars to do (Not Jerry, I admit) — and no one would have bothered if there weren’t a ready supply of people to buy the goods and services that each and every example provides.

So– why did those ordinary people want Mickey-Ds, Jerry Lewis, and Disney closer to home? Because they knew instinctively that we were on to something.

Even Obama would admit that– and it is for that very reason that he wants it stopped. They are the embodied power of envy and resentment. The only way they know how to handle either of them is like the school yard bully– who now resorts to using swat teams instead of fists.

While we still have will and breath, we should show them a more excellent way– to find satisfaction in building for yourself– rather than taking from others. Because when you build for yourself, you can build for the others who choose to join your little project; and thus lasting good can be created. This sort of thing just isn’t obvious to people who have never earned anything for themselves. They can only resent what they see, because they can see no way to get something that is truly theirs. And they won’t know, until someone shows them.

Now isn’t that why you got into education and library science in the first place? Ultimately, I don’t care weather or not you take this one girl to the range, as long as the deed gets done– without reversing a subconscious attraction to a larger world.

And further, I care infinitely more about whether or not you loose hope. Don’t do that. It sucks. Rest, and find your inner fight for another day. It may not mean much to you, but I’ll be praying for you.

Because, I was once that girl who got everything handed to her, and was protected from most of the badness in the world. When something bad did happen to me, I didn’t even realize it until much later. NO one thought to protect me from it, because the thought was so horrible that they were immobilized, and [by the magic of the Secret] convinced themselves it never happened. I was clueless. But after countless exposures to those who believed differently, after countless counter-examples to the propaganda I imbibed in high school- I finally added 2+2 and got 4. The light came on, and all those years I’d been running away from responsibility and work, I had been running away from my freedom.

For me, taking that freedom was infinitely better than living in a psychoactive drug induced haze while collecting social security. In such a world, everything would actually belong to someone else, and I would have everything I needed– but nothing at all was anything that I wanted. Because you don’t really understand ownership until you bought something with your own money– or until you finally realize that you are in a position where you don’t have anything that you truly own.

I know that last part sounds like a contradiction, or some kind of wishy-washy sound byte. Well, maybe it is. But it was the moment when I recognized that all that I had was something that I did not earn that I did not buy– was the moment that I wanted something that I had done.

That was the moment when I yearned for real freedom. Not freedom to do whatever I wanted, but the real freedom. The kind that says I can figure out what works by seeing what fails or what succeeds. I can watch my little paper airplane sail across the sky, or dive bomb after two feet. Until you’ve tried it, you have no idea how liberating it is to actually know whether or not a project works.

This contrasts nicely to working in a modern Big Business office, where no one is told how they really preform until they get a pink slip or a whispered word from friends around the water cooler. If you are lucky, what you hear is the truth. But in an age where everyone is out to avoid the lawsuit and protect their jobs and projects to the detriment of their own company– NO one can handle the truth, even if they’ve got the W2.

This is the kind of freedom that comes from living in a self-reliant society. The kind where bad things happen and no one has to get paid off. The kind where you look at a disaster as an opportunity. It takes a while, it’s not pretty, but eventually you pick yourself up because you have to, and start over.

I wanted a future. A future that wasn’t just handed to me– a floating existence, sheltered for my own safety, or subtly indoctrinated for my own good. I wanted a future worth wanting, a dream a desire that I could make with my own hands. Something that I could share– come hell or high water.

I wanted a family, not a loose nit group of associates who consented to spend time with me for their own good. I wanted a career, not some dead end job that existed solely to feed my face, protect my ego, and cover rent.

And I wanted a chance to actually get honest feedback– because too many people were lying to me to spare my feelings– once again, for my own good. How would I ever know that I could succeed? How could I even define success? Why, if you can’t do these things, still insist on quality time or quality product, or even quality work? You just can’t have those things when you have freedom from disappointment, suffering, or judgment. Winning isn’t winning if you know you cannot fail.

One great thing about firearms is that you can’t lie about how well you shoot. At least– you can’t if you have a smoking gun in your hand, and you are standing in an isle at a gun range, staring at a perforated paper target.

I did not even know how to articulate it until much later, but it was a yearning that burned my guts all the way through High School and college. If someone had only shown me then… perhaps the mental math would not have taken so long.